Chapter Nineteen
NINETEEN
Phoebe
Four Years Ago
The Melon Drop
Nashville, Tennessee
“Yeeeeee-haw!” Oliver howls and tucks a cowboy hat on his head full of natural dark brown hair. “This round is on me, boys.” He barrel-chest-bumps the bachelor, Bradley Wheeler, who’s a city boy from Toronto and looking to experience Nashville’s nightlife before the big wedding day.
Bradley is also loaded.
Like flew a private jet here loaded. Buys the most expensive liquor at the bar loaded. Wears a Breguet Swiss luxury watch loaded. That’s probably fifteen million just on his wrist.
Lucky for him, he just so happened to run into three “Nashville locals.” After striking up great conversation, Oliver, Rocky, and I offered to take his bachelor party on a honky-tonk bar crawl. To show Bradley and his groomsmen the best music, the best drinks, and the best time.
Bradley is all grins, pumping his fist as he follows his new friend Oakley (ahem, Oliver) to the packed bar.
“Tequila with lime, Penelope?” Shane, the best man, asks me on his way to the bar, too. He’s bought me shots at the past three stops. I drank two J?ger bombs, then dumped the third when no one was looking.
“Just a water!” I shout after him, my Tennessee twang more subtle than Oliver’s. Per usual, my brother is going above and beyond. Just hopefully not too far.
“Aw, come on!” Shane shouts back. “Don’t be a Debbie Downer! I’ll get you a tequila!!” He disappears into the sweaty throng with the rest of the bachelor party, not giving me the opportunity to decline.
“He wants in your pants,” Rocky says huskily, a toothpick between his lips and his elbow perched casually on a wooden barrel. He’s Rhett. My college friend. Same with Oliver. We all supposedly met freshman year at Vanderbilt.
Rocky hangs back with me, and I’m momentarily hooked on how hushed and deep he speaks. Like we’re slipping clandestine notes to each other.
“He’ll have to try a little harder. I’m waiting till marriage.” I thicken my twang. “Thank the good Lord.”
Rocky almost smiles at my lie. Almost. “Praise be.”
“Praise be,” I joke, too, but Rocky looks straight into me. He’s holding my gaze for longer than any man ever does. It’s more intimate than a full-body once-over. Flush tries to roast my cheeks.
If attraction is a scorch, then Rocky is the only one who gives me third-degree burns.
I’m hooked on more than just the photogenic planes of his cutting jawline, more than his annoyingly perfect hair as a few tendrils lightly brush his forehead.
More than his toughened stance that commands, You fuck with her, you fuck with me, to the rest of the bar.
More than how he wards off other men from approaching me.
More than how I feel safer when he’s close.
I’m hooked on the entirety of him. How he’s choosing to be at my side. How his real coarse nature flickers across his striking features for only me to notice. For only me to see.
His dark, smoldering eyes still transfix me in a vise I’m not readily escaping. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Rhett,” I warn half-heartedly, not wanting him to stop staring.
“Penelope.” He bites on the toothpick, never tearing his gaze away. My heart thumps harder, faster.
Last thing I need is for Rocky to believe a falsehood—that I’m infatuated with him. I’m not some obsessed puppy about to slobber on his lap and beg for a fucking pet. I don’t want to be petted. I want to be ravaged.
I’m simply a twenty-one-year-old woman with a high libido. And I can admit to myself that it’s highest around him. I can’t help that my hormones go haywire in his presence. I can’t help that I love the feeling of my racing, skidding, flyaway pulse when he’s inches from me.
It’s human nature, and these are just biological problems.
Gathering my bearings, I face forward. The fun part of tonight is the best distraction from Rocky.
Live country music booms from a stage. Blue lights bathe a guitarist and fiddler along with the dance floor.
Girls in cheeky Daisy Dukes and cute leather boots are line-dancing with belt-buckle-clad guys.
Most are bachelor and bachelorette parties.
I see Barbie-pink bedazzled cowboy hats, sashes that say Last Rodeo, and penis straws.
I’m trying to enjoy tonight, especially since it’s our last one in Nashville.
“Do you think Hails will come out?” I ask Rocky more quietly. I’ve already texted his sister. She can pop in as a college friend who’s meeting up with us for a drink. It’d be an easy ruse to pull off.
“The godmothers specifically told her no, so no. You both don’t break rules.”
“That’s a good thing,” I point out.
“Being good gets you stepped on.” His deep voice sounds even more gravelly with his twang. “You must love looking at the bottom of your mom’s heels.”
“We all can’t be anarchists wanting to burn it down.”
His lip twitches into a slanted smile. “Does it look like I’m burning it down?”
He’s not setting fire to our lives. We are a well-organized machine of deceit. “You aren’t lighting any matches,” I observe, resting my forearms on the barrel in a casual lunge. It doesn’t draw his attention to my ass or my breasts. His focus remains on my face as he reads me.
It’s intrusive. Intimate again.
In a hot blip, I imagine Rocky moving behind me, sliding his possessive hands against the crook of my hips, and fucking me hard against the barrel. I brick-wall my expression so he can’t read those desires, but he has all the tools to knock me down if I’m not careful.
I don’t want to be careful with him. That’s the exhilarating, yet terrifying, part.
I skim his features. “Why not try to usurp them if you want to so badly?”
“Y’all don’t want me to try.” He eases out a sexy drawl and moves the toothpick with his tongue.
He might as well be saying, Because I love y’all more than I hate them.
My heart swells and pangs, and I should probably distance myself from Rocky—I should go entertain the bachelor party instead of sharing his company. I have a job to do, so does he, but neither of us moves.
I wonder when we became a vortex together. Exiting the EF5 winds takes hellacious effort, and I’m not fighting against the force of nature.
“Y’all?” I ask in a tight breath. “As in…?”
I want him to say, You. Mostly you. I love you more than anyone I know, Phoebe.
He shifts the toothpick again. “You know who.”
Right.
His siblings: a younger sister and brother. My siblings: two older brothers—granted, older by minutes.
I nod and say out loud, “You love Hails more than you hate the godmothers.”
“Astute,” he says. But he’s not adding me into the equation. He’s not putting me before his sister, and why would he? I’m just her best friend.
I’d put Hailey above myself, too.
I bend a little more. “I’ve been known to be perceptive.”
“Not more perceptive than me,” he says thickly. I’m unsure if it sounds like a challenge or a come-on.
I open my mouth to combat him. Instead, I intake a strange, shortened breath of arousal. I hope he doesn’t comment on it. And he doesn’t, not as his own muscles flex, as if controlling something carnal within himself.
We are perceptive. I think we both know attraction exists, thrives, terrorizes. Tension thickens at the unsaid things. Our bodies are mere inches apart, and still, neither of us shifts away or nearer.
I breathe hard.
He does, too.
Feelings are thorns we let puncture us. Sometimes I believe Rocky and I like bleeding out together.
I finally straighten up, and he slides his darkened gaze off me. If he had a beer, he’d likely chug it right now.
I wouldn’t say the tension snaps. It’s buried in my core, and I try to ignore it by checking my phone.
No new text from my best friend. I frown, wishing Rocky were wrong—that his sister would sneak out.
Which is a funny phrase: sneak out. She’s in her twenties, too.
Sneaking shouldn’t be a thing for us, but I guess it’s more like being held up at work.
She’s clocking in overtime since she’s helping our parents preplan the next long con.
After this, we’re heading to Miami.
I shove the phone in the front pocket of my frayed jean shorts. My ass peeks out. Each bar has been burning hot, so I’ve loved my skimpy outfit for comfortability. Plus, the matching bejeweled jean vest is seriously cute.
“She wanted to be here,” I remind her brother. “The original plan was better.”
Hailey had concocted a Bar Bill job. It would’ve taken at least a month, if not two, to pick out a mark and for one of us to be hired as a bartender, but our parents rejected it. Now we’re just passing through Nashville with this short con.
Last night, when we were told the change of plans, Hailey looked so defeated and said, “I just wish they gave me better constructive feedback over why they axed it.”
“They said it wasn’t personal,” I told her. “It wasn’t a bad con or setup.”
Hailey fell flat on the bed, dejected. “I’m pretty positive they don’t think I’m ready to plan a job of that level yet.”
I lay back with her and held her gaze consolingly. “It’s probably just timing.”
Hailey’s Bar Bill job would’ve meant she’d be having fun with us at Rowdy Rooster’s Watering Hole tonight. We could’ve even ridden the mechanical bull.
Now she’s stuck alone at the Ritz, which—yes, it’s not a Super 8 or an RV park, but seeing Hailey’s devious dreams get shot down offends me as her best friend. The universe should be better to her.
Hailey ended up taking her blues out on a pint of Moose Tracks. Rocky had gone to the nearest convenience store last night to get her the ice cream. I imagine she’s finishing off the last of the container while we’re here.
“The original plan,” Rocky says under his breath, not dropping the subtle Tennessee accent. “Did you like it because your best friend came up with it? Or because it involved her being here?”
“Both. And because of Nashville.” I watch the line dancers. “I’m not ready to leave.” The catchy tempo from a fiddle is invigorating. “Are you?”
I feel him studying me. “I could stay.”